Introduction
Tasks under the Research & Development PROFIT “MORFEO: open-source software community for the development of software components and platforms” project.
GForge provides a collection of integrated tools that ease collaboration work and in particular, the management of open-source software projects. These tools are of a different nature, for example:
- Forums
- Management and task process monitoring tools
- Error/improvement management
- Mailing lists
- Software version control tools
- Revision control tools
- Document management tools
- …
GForge is an open-source software product that counts on its corresponding open-source software community. However, thanks to the experience gained in software development within the MORFEO community and internal projects which use this tool, certain differences have been detected. Differences which, in some cases, are covered by tools which do not integrate with GForge and, in other cases, still are not solved. The MORFEO framework takes into consideration the development of new and improved functionality of GForge, which would take a specific project and improve it following the community framework.
A study of analysis that looked into the improvements and the need of new GForge functionality and its subsequent implementation was carried out.
Completed Tasks
In 2005, The Computer Science Faculty of the UPM carried out an analysis of possible improvements and extension of functionality that could be added to the collaborative G-forge open-source software development tool. A document, which can be found here, was created following the analysis and details the most important improvements to be made to G-forge.
Throughout this project, the improvements mentioned above have been analysed and put in priority order. Improvements relating to communication within development teams have subsequently been resolved and are described below:
- G-Forge improvement 1: Include other version control systems
- G-Forge improvement 2: Integrate a general Wiki describing the Gforge installation process
- G-Forge improvement 3: Provide a domain for each project
- G-Forge improvement 4: Incorporate editable FAQs for administrators
- G-Forge improvement 5: Incorporate the possibility to browse the forums using RSS clients
- G-Forge improvement 6: Introduce more exhaustive skills
- G-Forge improvement 7: Improve on user communication
- G-Forge improvement 8: Allow access and control of savings businesses
- G-Forge improvement 9: Incorporate statistical analysis tools
- G-Forge improvement 10: Improve on project portability
- G-Forge improvement 11: Consider the requirements of projects with restricted access sections
- G-Forge improvement 12: Make improvements to development weblogs
- G-Forge improvement 13: Make slight modifications to the forms so that users can enter text with layout
The G-Fogre improvements, carried out by the UPM and the URJC, will be included in the MORFEO community forge and will be offered to the GForge community as the projects main branch.
Results
As a result of the task completion, a series of improvements have been made to the GForge tool, as well as new functionality added. These improvements and additions are well documented in a series of user manuals and installation guides, which can be found below.
- GForge User Manuals (of improvements and additions)
- Sources
- Implementation Plan of GForge improvements
Test Forges
All of the improvements have been implemented within various test forges, helping to see any possible incompatibilities between them.
Pending Topics
- Implementation Plan – operative forges
- Inform the GForge community
- Inform MORFEO members about the forge improvements presentation
